A good night’s sleep for good health
by Kelly Stone
Burning the candle at both ends could potentially harm your health, according to a new sleep researcher at UniSA.
Dr Siobhan Banks is investigating the link between sleep deprivation and chronic conditions such as diabetes and metabolic syndrome at UniSA’s Centre for Sleep Research.
She is the recipient of a UniSA Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women, which supports the development of young female researchers with outstanding potential. The fellowship has brought her back home to Adelaide after five years researching sleep loss in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine.
"My research in the United States looked at sleep loss during a working week, where sleep might be restricted by work or family pressures, and whether you can recover that lost sleep by sleeping in on the weekend," she said.
"We found that you’re nearly able to recover with one night of an extended sleep opportunity, but that one night didn’t afford much long term benefit. We are analysing data now to see if getting two nights of extended sleep will recover your performance more fully, so you’re able to head back into the working week and do it all again.
"It’s all about how much sleep you need and for how many nights so that you don’t accumulate a sleep debt and performance deficits. Some people need less sleep, are naturally short sleepers and function happily on six hours a night, while there are others who need more. Having a few nights where you don’t sleep well probably isn’t too bad; it’s when you under-sleep for a long period that a sleep debt accumulates."
Dr Banks’ research will focus on the health implications of slept debt.
"I will be looking at whether shortened sleep exacerbates health problems for people with metabolic syndrome," she said.
"I will also work with healthy people to see if by restricting their sleep they then start to show some of the signs of developing metabolic disruption…and if they continued down that path of sleep debt would it be a precursor to them developing metabolic syndrome or other health problems."
Dr Banks said shortened sleep time has previously been associated with obesity, high blood pressure and risk of cardiovascular disease in large epidemiological studies around the world but that very few experiments, especially in older populations, have been done to see if there is a casual link between sleep loss and health.
"Getting less than six hours sleep per night seems to be associated with metabolic disturbance and obesity…but only a few studies have really delved carefully into the hormonal and metabolic disruptions that occur with sleep loss," she said.
"I’m keen to do some more systematic investigations into the direct link between sleep loss and the associated health effects and I will be targeting people from both younger and older age groups."
Dr Banks hopes her research might improve people’s overall health.
"Perhaps if we improve people’s sleep and their lifestyle then it might have implications for their general health and well-being," she said.
Dr Banks’ interest in sleep research started when she took a job as a research assistant at the Repatriation Hospital’s Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health (AISH) after completing her Bachelor degree.
"I worked on a project there looking at treatment options for people with mild obstructive sleep apnoea. While working at AISH I had a career epiphany and decided I wanted to do nothing more than study sleep," she said.
"I thought it was really cool, seeing sleep EEG and watching the patterns throughout the night of someone sleeping. I just found sleep fascinating. I then focused my PhD thesis on the measurement of sleepiness and haven’t looked back since."
Dr Banks is the first to admit that, as a sleep researcher, she worries how much sleep she gets each night.
"I’m definitely one of those people who fusses too much. I’m someone who always tries to get eight hours’ sleep a night – but it’s not always possible," she said.
"At sleep conferences, the researchers always end up talking about their sleep… we all complain about jet lag, not getting enough sleep, wearing ear plugs to block out the noise, how much coffee we have had...we certainly talk about our sleep a lot!"
Dr Banks’ Fellowship for Women is a three-year appointment at UniSA. She is delighted to have received the fellowship, which she says is "fantastic" because it encourages women in their early research careers when support is needed most.